The Big East Breakup: Effects on Competitive Balance

Abstract

Whereas much of the research on competitive balance deals with the addition of one or more members to a conference and compares the competitive balance before and after the addition(s), the authors of this study investigated competitive balance in men’s basketball, using the extreme case of the breakup of the Big East Conference, which led to a reconstituted Big East Conference and the formation of the American Athletic Conference (AAC). Given that the reconstituted Big East Conference had basically chosen its members, whereas the AAC need to scramble around to replace its departing members, it was hypothesized that the reconstituted Big East Conference would have a more competitively balance conference than the newly formed AAC. Using the standard deviation, it was discovered that competition among men’s basketball teams displayed more competitive balance in the reconstituted Big East conference than in the AAC.